Several years after hearing all of the criticisms surrounding this game and discovering later that it got a big combat overhaul, I decided to buy the game as an experiment.
First and foremost, the combat for the game has improved dramatically from what I had seen initially; It is rather snappy, intuitive, and visually exciting. It is definitely much faster than it was before.
With that being said, the combat system -- although it has breadth in terms of having many collectible Karta (cards that act as shields around your party members with unique passives and actives), Pokemon-style elements, equipment, field skills, and stats -- still lacks depth and customization in some areas, and is generally easy:
- Enemies don't have skills unique to them. Although they can use Karta, those effects are predictable, as in, some instant damage or a stat boost. The enemies in this game behave in fundamentally the same way, so there is less incentive to diversify your party to withstand different enemy archetypes-- Instead, raw damage and speed is the winner.
- Characters are mostly locked to their element types. There is a Karta that changes their element to water, and an ability exclusive to a few characters which copies an enemy's element type, but I think that's it.
- Gear, for the most part, follows a linear upgrade path and is just numeric stat boosts. There isn't much of it to begin with, and it doesn't branch far into different regions of stats, so building a specialized kit for a party member is not doable. Additionally, there is essentially only one "best X in the game" for each equipment slot.
- Stat distributions while leveling up only apply to Alex's character, which is mirrored for other characters I believe, making the diversification of stats across different part members harder to do.
- Items are limited and not very exciting: A big chunk of them are healing items, eye drops -- which you only end up using on the eyeball enemies, gauze, which is great during boss fights but is pretty banal, smoke bombs to escape combat, which is almost never necessary, since after TPKs, you can simply choose to re-try the fight from the very beginning without any consequences, re-try with a booster pack, or simply revert to the previous save.
- Save spots are all over the place, making TPK's far less of a concern.
- You do not need to stock up on healing in some areas. You get them from vending machines, but, in some parts of the game, there are sinks that fully heal your entire party -- making the use of healing items outside of combat wasteful. If you get hurt, you could technically run to the sink and back instead of spending your food items.
- Rarely will you ever need to use the active abilities on the Karta, as the circumstances for needing to activate them can be quite niche, and the trade offs of losing a chunk of your defense, the stat boosts that come with the card, and the card's passive typically outweigh the benefits provided to you by that card's active ability.
- Some Karta are far more powerful than others: Seamstress doubles the holder's HP even after depletion, and for instance, when combining Poisoned Apple + Sorrowful Maiden, I was able to bypass the shielding provided by the enemy's karta, destroy all of them in one hit, and in a few cases, kill the enemy in one hit as opposed to having to make it through their karta first (which takes many hits to do).
- Bleed/fire does not seem to scale with health, so, in late game, it becomes a poor source of damage and is not that threatening to your party.
Although I've listed some pain points regarding the combat, I think it is still competent overall and is made more immersive with the music and visuals.
The cutscenes are really cool: Think Microsoft 3D Movie Maker but if it were more cinematic and done in an avant-garde way. The visuals are fantastic as well -- certain areas of the game are stunning to look at and the variety in the environments in this game is enormous. The intentionally-reduced-framerate animation, low poly graphics, and pixel-art textures mesh well with the game's theme and in my mind were, although not initially liked, a bit ahead of its time on release in terms of aesthetic, and more relevant now since there has been a renewed interest in Y2K, PS1 style Demake games and music, low poly modelling, etc.
The story is bizarre and incoherent. The dialogue is heavy-handed, abstract, or plain cringeworthy at times, bolstered by the fact that Alex, the main character, is intended to be as unlikeable as possible. Throughout the game, various world-building details, characters, and quirks regarding the 'other world' are shotgunned at the player without too much of a deep dive into them, the game is interleaved with a story arc that is entirely removed from the main story, cutscenes are introduced that appear to jump forward and backward in time, and monologues from Alex frequently interrupt the flow of the story, intentionally fragmenting it. The trick is to not take the story at face value but instead to 'experience' it and come up with your own interpretations for aspects of the world that are left ambiguous. However, having to do it this way is not necessarily a boon: Players expecting the truss work of a strong storyline, in the side stories most notably, are left instead with vague and oftentimes flowery storytelling that leaves mounting, unanswered questions about the circumstances of the world and the characters. It isn't for everybody; however, those for whom it is will find it intriguing, but not without its flaws.
Overall, YIIK was certainly not what I expected, and the comeback was monumental, although it is a rough gem. I think the most straightforward way to describe it is that it's a rough-around-the-edges cult-classic labor of love project that redeemed itself with the 1.5 update, bolstered especially with two new side stories to supplement its complicated universe and cast of characters -- and give the player a break from Alex's shenanigans. 8/10.
